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1. Bullhead City: Initial base of undercover operations and home of Donald Smith aka “Smitty” 2. Laughlin: Site of Harrah’s Casino, where Hells Angels–Mongols shootout occurred 3. Kingman: Home of Joby Walters 4. Chino Valley: Skull Valley clubhouse 5. Prescott: Undercover trailer home 6. Flagstaff: Arizona Nomads clubhouse 7. Munds Park: Site of Too Broke for Sturgis Run 8. Cave Creek clubhouse 9. Carefree: Home of Sonny Barger 10. Undercover house (while prospecting) 11. Undercover house (while with Solo Angeles) 12. Mesa clubhouse 13. Chandler: Home of “Bad Bob” Johnston 14. Florence: Home of annual Prison Run 15. Tucson: Tucson clubhouse, Black Rose tattoo parlor, and homes of Doug Dam, Robert McKay, and Jay Dobyns during Operation Black Biscuit
ME XI CO Gulf of California
aR Gi l
r ive
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My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels
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NO ANGEL
JAY DOBYNS A N D N I L S J O H N S O N - S H E LTO N
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Copyright © 2009 by Jay Dobyns All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in New York, in 2009. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Easy,” words and music by Lionel Richie, copyright © 1977, renewed 2005 by Jobete Music Co., Inc. and Libren Music. All rights controlled and administered by EMI April Music Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. Universal Music Publishing Group: Excerpt from “Be Like That” by Brad Arnold and Christopher Henderson, copyright © 2000 by Songs of Universal, Inc. and Escatawpa Songs. All rights administered by Songs of Universal, Inc./BMI. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Universal Music Publishing Group. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dobyns, Jay. No angel: My harrowing undercover journey to the inner circle of the Hells Angels / Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton. p. cm. 1. Dobyns, Jay. 2. Undercover operations—Arizona. 3. Organized crime—Arizona. 4. Motorcycle gangs—Arizona. 5. Hells Angels. I. Johnson-Shelton, Nils. II. Title. HV8080.U5D63 2009 364.106'60979—dc22 2008029836 ISBN: 978-0-307-40586-9 Printed in the United States of America Design by Debbie Glasserman 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Paperback Edition
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To purchase a copy of
No Angel
visit one of these online retailers:
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Contents
Bikers, Cops, and Motorcycle Clubs Involved in Operations Riverside and Black Biscuit Note to the Reader
ix xv
PART I. THE END 11. Birdcalls
3
PART II. THE BEGINNING 12. My sucking chest wound 13. “You’re looking at the loves of my life is what you’re looking at.” 14. Hoedown at Harrah’s 15. Black Biscuit BBQ 16. Rudy wanted to know where I did my time
9 17 28 39 44
PART III. THE MIDDLE 17. Too broke for Sturgis, where Timmy learned the fine art of fetching sauerkraut 18. Jesus Hates a Pussy 19. First night in Mesa 10. I wanna what? 11. Why’d Jack give me that rock? 12. Teaching Teacher 13. Feeding Smitty his cake 14. “Fuck your guns!” 15. Good-bye, Carlos 16. We want you 17. Gimme a B! Gimme an I! Gimme an R! Gimme a D! 18. Five years in the desert
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19. Arresting Rudy Kramer 20. Hello, JJ 21. Pep talk 22. “Motherfucker, if I ever see you in this town again I will fucking bury you in the desert where no one will ever fucking find you.” 23. Inhale . . . Exhale . . . Inhale . . . Exhale . . . 24. Jingle bells, Batman smells, etc. 25. The Solo temporaries 26. Will you be mine? 27. “9-1-1! 9-1-1! Get out of the house!” 28. The Iron Skillet 29. “Look, lady, it’s not like I don’t give a fuck what you’re saying, but I don’t give a fuck what you’re saying.” 30. Hoover’s hit 31. No more Solos 32. Big Lou and Gayland Hammack run some game 33. “Get me that brown mustard, not that yellow shit.”
143 152 158 162 171 174 185 195 202 209 215 224 231 238 248
PART IV. THE END, AGAIN 34. Hydroxycut highway 35. Bottom rockers are us 36. Call to arms 37. . . . 38. Hate and money 39. The bust
259 267 278 290 291 304
Epilogue Where Are They Now? Author’s Note Glossary Acknowledgments
309 315 319 321 327
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Bikers, Cops, and Motorcycle Clubs Involved in Operations Riverside and Black Biscuit
Black Biscuit Task Force Members and Associates by Agency (alphabetical by last name) Note: The men and women listed below are the principal players found in the text. The Acknowledgments section at the end of the book contains a comprehensive list of officers involved with Black Biscuit. ATF Chris Bayless, special agent, aka “Chrisser” Carlos Canino, special agent, aka “Los” Vince Cefalu, special agent, aka “Vinnie” John Ciccone, special agent Greg Cowan, special agent, aka “Sugarbear” Jay Dobyns, special agent, aka “Bird” Alan Futvoye, special agent, aka “Footy” Steve Gunderson, special agent, aka “Gundo” Daniel Machonis, group supervisor, aka “Mach One” Jenna Maguire, special agent, aka “JJ” Tom Mangan, special agent, aka “Teabag” Joe Slatalla, special agent, aka “Slats” Jesse Summers, special agent, aka “Summer Breeze” OTH E R LAW E N FO R C E M E NT Gayland Hammack, sergeant, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department William Long, detective, Phoenix Police Department, aka “Timmy” Shawn Wood, sergeant, Arizona Department of Public Safety, aka “Woody”
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ATF I N FO R MANTS Pops (given name not provided) Michael Kramer, Hells Angels member at Mesa, Arizona, and San Fernando Valley, California, charters, aka “Mesa Mike” Rudolph Kramer, Solo Angeles member, aka “Rudy” (no relation to Michael Kramer)
Hells Angels by Charter (alphabetical by last name) Note: As above, the men listed below are only the significant players found in the text. Many more Hells Angels are mentioned in the pages that follow. AR IZ O NA N O MAD S, FLAG STAFF, AR IZ O NA Dennis Denbesten, member, aka “Chef Boy-Ar-Dee” Donald Smith, member, aka “Smitty” CAV E C R E E K, AR IZ O NA Ralph Barger, member, aka “Sonny,” “Chief ” Daniel Danza, member, aka “Dirty Dan” Daniel Seybert, president, aka “Hoover” M E SA, AR IZ O NA, AKA “M E SA M O B” Kevin Augustiniak, member Gary Dunham, secretary, aka “Ghost” Paul Eischeid, member Robert Johnston, president, aka “Bad Bob,” “Mesa Bob” Mike Kramer, member, aka “Mesa Mike” (transferred to San Fernando Valley, California, charter during the case) Calvin Schaefer, member, aka “Casino Cal” P H O E N IX, AR IZ O NA, AKA “H OTH E DZ” Robert Mora, member, aka “Chico” SAN D I E G O, CALI FO R N IA Pete Eunice, member, aka “Dago Pete,” “Ramona Pete” S KU LL VALLEY, AR IZ O NA, AKA “G RAV EYAR D C R E W” Rudy Jaime, member www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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Robert Reinstra, vice president, aka “Bobby” Joseph Richardson, member, aka “Joey,” “Egghead” Theodore Toth, president, aka “Teddy” George Walters, sergeant at arms, aka “Joby” TU C S O N, AR IZ O NA Douglas Dam, member, aka “Doug” Craig Kelly, president, aka “Fang” Robert McKay, member, aka “Mac” Henry Watkins, prospect, aka “Hank”
Hells Angels’ Old Ladies Dolly Denbesten (wife of Dennis Denbesten) Staci Laird (girlfriend of Bobby Reinstra) Lydia Smith (wife of Donald Smith)
Other Suspects of Note Alberto (last name unknown), vice president, Mexican Solo Angeles, Tijuana, Mexico Robert Abraham, gun dealer, Bullhead City, Arizona Tony Cruze, member, Red Devils, Tucson, Arizona Tim Holt, machinist, Mohave, Arizona Dave “Teacher” Rodarte, president, U.S. Solo Angeles, Los Angeles, California Scott Varvil, school nurse, mechanic, Kingman, Arizona
Arizona Motorcycle Clubs and Charter Locations (alphabetical after Hells Angels and Solo Angeles) H E LLS AN G E LS* aka “Big Red Machine,” “Red and White,” “81” Arizona Nomads (Flagstaff ), Cave Creek, Mesa, Phoenix, Skull Valley, Tucson
*Note: the charters listed are only for Arizona. As noted in the text, the Hells Angels have charters in approximately twenty states and twenty-six countries. www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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S O LO AN G E LE S aka “Orange Crush” Arizona Nomads (Bullhead City, Phoenix, Prescott) AM E R I CAN S Page D E S E RT R OAD R I D E R S Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City D E V I LS’ D I S C I P LE S Tucson D I RTY D OZ E N (D E FU N CT) Phoenix HUNS Tucson LI M EYS Charter location unknown LO N E R S Globe M O N G O LS Phoenix R E D D E V I LS Tucson, Phoenix S PARTAN S Phoenix Vietnam Vets Statewide
Major Motorcycle Clubs Traditionally Adversarial to the Hells Angels BAN D ITO S Texas, western states, international; aka “the Red and Gold,” “Bandits” www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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M O N G O LS California, western states; aka “the Black,” “the Black and White” O UTLAWS Midwest and Southern states; aka “OLs” PAGAN S Eastern states R O C K MAC H I N E Canada (absorbed by Banditos) VAG O S California; aka “the Green,” “Greenies”
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NOTE TO THE READER:
The worlds of undercover cops and outlaw bikers are colorful and unique, and each possesses its own language. If at any time you’re unclear about the terms found on the following pages, please consult the glossary found at the back of this book.
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PART I
THE END
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BIRDCALLS
JUNE 25 AND 26, 2003
TIMMY LEANED CASUALLY against the rear fender of my black Mercury Cougar, a cell phone on his ear and a smile on his face. The bastard was typically calm. Twelve months I’d been his partner, in and out of harm’s way, both together and alone, and the guy never looked stressed. He was as self-possessed as a rooster in a hen house— my polar opposite. I paced in front of him, rehearsing what I was going to tell our Hells Angels brothers. I shook the last smoke out of a pack of Newports. “Shit.” I lit the cigarette, crumpled the pack, and threw it to the ground. It was 10:00 a.m. and I’d already emptied the first pack of the carton I’d bought that morning. Timmy said into his phone, “I love you too honey cake. I should be home soon.” He’d been saying things like that going on five minutes. I stared at him and said, “The fuck, stud? Come on.” Timmy put a finger in the air and continued on the phone. “OK. Gotta run. Love you guys. OK. See you tonight.” He snapped his phone closed. “What’s the drama, Bird? We got this.” “Oh, you know. Nothing really.” I pointed at the guy lying facedown at our feet. “Just that if they don’t buy it, then we’ll end up like this asshole.” www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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There, in a shallow desert ditch, was a gray-haired Caucasian male, his head split to the white meat. A pile of brains had oozed to the ground where Timmy had put Joby’s .380. Blood droplets, sprayed into the sand and dirt, made small, dark constellations. His blue jeans were splattered with purple, quarter-sized splotches. His wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape, his hands were limp. It was already over 100 degrees and the promise of coagulated blood and exposed matter had begun to attract flies. He wore a black leather jacket whose top rocker, that curved cloth patch that spanned the shoulder blades, read mongols. I asked, “You think he’s dead?” Timmy said, “Dude looks deader’n disco. Shit, those look like his brains in the dirt.” Timmy leaned in closer. “Yeah, I’d say he’s pretty dead.” He spat a stream of phlegm into the brush beyond the grave. “Dude, no fucking around here. We go home and show the boys we killed a Mongol, then we better be dead-nuts sure it doesn’t look like he’s coming back.” Timmy smiled. “Relax, Bird, we got this. Like Lionel Richie said, we’re easy like Sunday mornin’.” And then he started to sing. Badly: Why in the world would anybody put chains on me? I’ve paid my dues to make it. Everybody wants me to be what they want me to be. I’m not happy when I try to fake it! Ooh, That’s why I’m easy. Yeah. I’m easy like Sunday mornin’. I smiled and said, “You’re right, you’re right. And even if you aren’t, I don’t see how it matters. We’ve come too far.” He thought about that for a second. “Yeah, we have.” We threw a couple shovels of dirt on our corpse and took some pictures. We relieved him of his Mongol jacket, stuffing it in a FedEx box. We got in the car and headed home, to Phoenix.
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TIMMY DROVE. I made some phone calls.
I lit a cigarette and waited for someone to pick up at the clubhouse. Inhale. Hold it in. Click. The voice said, “Skull Valley.” I said, “Bobby, it’s Bird.” “Bird. What the fuck?” “Teddy there?” “Not now, no.” Bobby Reinstra’s voice was humorless and empty. “We’re on our way back.” “‘ We’ who?” Inhale. Hold it in. I said, “Me and Timmy.” “No Pops?” “No Pops. He stayed down in Mexico.” “So Pops is gone.” I heard him light a cigarette— he’d only started smoking again since he’d met me. “Yeah, dude.” “Wow.” Bobby smoked. Inhaled. Held it in. I said, “We should probably talk about this later, don’t you think?” He snapped out of it. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. When’ll you be back?” “Soon. I’ll call when we’re back in the valley.” “OK. Get home safe.” “We will. Don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow.” “OK. Later.” “Later.” I flipped my cell shut and turned to Timmy. I said, “He bit it. Pops’s death should work to our advantage.” Timmy barely nodded. He was probably thinking about his wife and kids. Above all else, Timmy was decent. I looked past him. The asphalt and brown California pines, the late-afternoon grid of Phoenix, Arizona, moved beyond him like a sunset movie backdrop.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, JJ, Timmy, and I chowed at a Pizza Hut. We hadn’t
seen Bobby or any of the other boys yet. We wanted their tension to build. JJ’s phone rang. She looked at the ID, then at me. I shrugged, stuffed a pepperoni slice in my mouth, and nodded. www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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She flipped open. “Hello?” She grinned. “Hi, Bobby. No, I haven’t heard from him. You have? When? What’d he say? He said what?! Bobby, what the fuck do you mean? Pops is—Pops is dead ?” She lowered her voice and choked out the words with a frightened stutter. “Bobby, you’re scaring me! I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. All I know is a FedEx box came to the house this morning. It was sent from Nogales, Mexico.” She pulled the phone away from her ear and placed a slice of roasted green pepper in her mouth. She sipped more iced tea. “No way, Bobby! I’m not opening shit. No. Forget it. Not until Bird gets back.” JJ’s fear was convincing and effective. Our plan seemed to be working. I leaned into the leather banquette. We weren’t your average-looking cops— we weren’t even your average-looking undercover cops— and we painted quite a picture. Timmy and I were bald, muscular, and covered in tattoos. JJ was cute, buxom, and focused. My eyes were blue and always lit up, Timmy’s brown and wise, JJ’s green and eager. Each of my long, bony fingers was armored with silver rings depicting things like skulls and talons and lightning bolts. My long, straggly goatee was haphazardly twisted into a ragged braid. JJ and I wore white wife-beater tank tops and Timmy wore a black, sleeveless T-shirt that said skull valley—graveyard crew over the heart. I wore green camo cargo pants and flip-flops, and they wore jeans and riding boots. We each openly carried at least one firearm. Arizona’s open-carry, so there you go. JJ continued. “No way, Bobby. I’m not coming over there with the box. I’m waiting till Bird gets home. All right. All right. Bye.” She hung up. She turned back to us and asked sarcastically, “So, honey, when can I expect you?” I grinned and said, “Any time, now. Any time.” “OK! Can’t wait!” We laughed and finished our lunch. We’d been running ragged for months and were in the homestretch. With any luck, Timmy and I were about to become full-patch Hells Angels, and JJ was about to become a real-life HA old lady. With any luck.
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PART II
THE BEGINNING
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MY SUCKING CHEST WOUND
NOVEMBER 19, 1987
I DIDN’T COME from a line of cops. I wasn’t raised in the projects, and an alcoholic father didn’t beat me. I grew up in white, middle-class America with a bike and a baseball glove and family vacations. I played football and played it well. I went to college as a wide receiver for the Arizona Wildcats. In that first year, 1982, I showed up at fall camp for two-adays in a 100-degree hellhole in Douglas, Arizona. The practice field was smack in the middle of the desert. Turf, sidelines, one or two feet of desert scrabble, and then cactus. Most wide outs want to outrun the defense for game-winning passes, catch the ball over their shoulder, and screw the prom queen. I wouldn’t have minded the prom queen, but I wasn’t that kind of receiver. The coaches knew this, and they’d put me at number six on the depth chart. That had to change. I jumped in the play rotation whenever a slant over the middle was called or a crack on a linebacker was needed. I got the dog snot beat out of me, down after down. One play I got an out-route and the ball was overthrown. I ran out of bounds, into the desert, and dove, grabbing the ball but landing in a patch of cholla cactus, which are the nastiest of www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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all cacti. I spent the rest of practice with the trainers pulling needles out of my face and arms with pliers. The other players laughed at me because what fool chases an overthrow into a cholla? I checked the depth chart the next day. I’d taken the first spot, and for the rest of my college career, I wouldn’t give it up to anyone, no matter how fast he was. By the time I graduated, I was All Pac-10. I was lightly scouted and I went to the NFL Combine, but from the minute I walked onto the field I realized that my chances were slim to none. One scout put it perfectly. He said, “I can coach these guys to catch like you, but I can’t teach you how to run faster.” Next to the guys coming up that year, I looked like molasses poured into cement. Guys like Vance Johnson, Al Toon, Andre Reed, Eddie Brown, and Jerry Rice. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them. I knew I could cobble together a career of two or three years, but every year I’d have to re-prove myself in camp, and at best I’d be a thirdor fourth-string option. My dreams were crushed and I didn’t know what to do. I’d gotten too used to crowds screaming for me, too addicted to adrenaline, to just let it go. Eventually I turned to law enforcement. I was young and I bought into the Hollywood vision of being a cop. I considered the FBI and the Secret Service, but ultimately I ended up at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms— ATF. This was where I’d transform from star college athlete to hardened undercover cop. It happened on one of my first training missions, and it went down like this: We’d gotten a warrant for one Brent Provestgaard, who’d just gotten out of prison and was rumored to be in possession of a used .38 Rossi. We were going to bust him on ATF’s bread-and-butter violation: felon in possession of a firearm, 18 USC section 922(g)(1). I was assigned outside perimeter cover with my training officer, Lee Mellor. We rode in a crappy 1983 Monte Carlo. We interviewed Provestgaard’s mom at her house south of the Tucson airport, at the intersection of Creeger Road and Old Nogales Highway. She said he wasn’t in and he’d be back sooner or later. We left and staked out the place. What Mrs. Provestgaard declined to tell us was that her son had sworn he’d never go back to prison, and that he was out in the Tucson scrub shooting his .38. www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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He came home on his motorcycle. We swarmed and he bolted on foot. I took off, passing everyone and disobeying orders to stay back. While a 4.6 in the NFL is nothing special, it’s sick speed for a cop. It was a full-blown foot chase, but he knew the area and I lost him. I reassembled with my team and they ribbed me about how I was supposed to be some sort of star athlete, but I couldn’t catch a 150-pound junkie in motorcycle boots? No wonder I was in ATF and not the NFL, that kind of thing. As we restaged, a neighbor yelled from her window that she’d just seen Provestgaard. We took off. First rookie mistake: no matter how out of breath you are from chasing a perp, never, ever take off your ballistics vest when there’s a lull in the action. Which is exactly what I’d done. The team split up. I walked behind our much-loved boss, Larry Thomason, through an overgrown tract between a development and the road. Tall grass and low trees were everywhere. We crept past the hidden Provestgaard. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye but before I could react he was up with his gun on me. “Drop it, motherfucker!” I knew better. I held my gun, a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver, at the ready position: pointed to the ground at a 45-degree angle. He cocked the Rossi’s hammer, yelling, “Motherfucker, I will kill you where you stand! Drop the fucking gun!” I holstered my revolver and put my hands in the air. Thomason cocked his hammer. He had Provestgaard in his sights, but he was toting a two-inch-barrel revolver and he was thirty feet away. Thomason knew that if he fired there was a good chance he’d hit me. He held. It was the right decision, but one that gravely altered his psyche: He was a committed leader in charge of showing a young man the ropes of a dangerous profession, and he never forgave himself for not taking that shot. I’ve always told him that the blame was mine, but he never accepted that. The others, searching an adjacent area, responded. When Provestgaard saw the empty Monte Carlo, his eyes— intense, bottomless specks— lit up. He was going to get out of there. Provestgaard’s gun was thrust out in front of him. When he got close enough, I planned on pulling his arm and using it as leverage to disarm www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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him. That plan died when he tucked the gun to his side. Before I knew it he had me in front of him, his arm around my neck, the cold barrel of the Rossi at my temple. I didn’t like that. I suddenly realized that it had rained earlier and the desert brush smelled like a clean backyard, which is what I imagine heaven must smell like. I hoped I wasn’t about to find out if my imagining was correct. We moved to the car. Provestgaard shoved me into the driver’s seat and squeezed into the back, keeping the gun on my head. ATF agents surrounded us, their weapons drawn and their mouths running. Provestgaard said, “Close the door and drive, motherfucker!” I didn’t. The car wasn’t running. The keys were in the ignition. He shoved the barrel into the hollow of my neck. I wondered: Should I drive, put the seat belt on, and run into a telephone pole? Or get shot here and let my partners waste him? Or hope one of them gets a clean line on him right this second? Or lie down and try to stay out of the way of everyone’s bullets that were sure to puncture the Monte Carlo any second? Or, or, or . . . drop the keys? Yes, drop the keys. If I was going to die, then he was going to die too. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and let them fall into the footwell. I said, “I dropped the keys.” “Motherfucker— ” I leaned forward and Provestgaard did too. Mellor, who was closest to the passenger’s side of the car, stuck his revolver in the rear window gap and emptied it. Others fired. Provestgaard, his body shocked from the bullets cleaning out his heart and lungs, reflexively squeezed the Rossi’s trigger. The bullet went in between my shoulder blades, just missed my spine, punctured the top of my left lung, and exited under my collarbone. Provestgaard had the death rattle. I had a hole in my chest. They call it a sucking chest wound because when you inhale, air is sucked through the wound directly into the void of a collapsing lung. Blood gushed out of the hole like water from a garden spigot. We were dragged out of the car. Provestgaard was cuffed (you have to love police procedure in times like this), and laid in the dirt faceup. I was shoved into the backseat, in pools of Provestgaard’s blood and bile and tears, and Thomason jumped into the front seat and took off. I was www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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in and out of consciousness as Thomason channeled Dale Earnhardt Jr. through the Tucson dusk. I said the Lord’s Prayer and apologized to my parents for not being a good enough cop to make them proud. Then I took a little nap. I came to at the hospital. I was on a gurney, the ceiling rushed by in blue and white streaks, the soft but anxious pitter-patter of nurses’ and orderlies’ feet on linoleum filled my ears. There were two black nostrils above me, and above them a tuft of brown hair, and around that a halfmoon of white paper. A hat. My nurse. Her gaze was locked on the horizon. I asked, “I’m—I— am I going to die?” She looked down. She was pretty. Her left hand pushed into my chest. “You’re hurt bad. We’re not sure yet.” I passed back out. I woke back up to a screaming pain in my chest. A boyish resident was inserting a clear tube into a hole he’d scalpeled through my rib cage to prevent me from drowning in my own blood. The tube would also be used to clear blood clots before I went into the operating room. I’d never felt such pain and discomfort. Having an inch-wide tube inserted into a raw hole of flesh was like, well, it was just like that. I was not anesthetized— there hadn’t been time. I was dying. I looked at the tube, which was attached to a pump. Stewed tomatoes— aka my blood and guts— pulsed through it. When he was done with that, the resident directed me to a video screen. He said proudly that they’d put a shunt in my femoral artery that helped guide a medical camera through my torso. He said they were looking for heart and arterial damage caused by bullet frag. I thought, Far out. I passed back out. I woke back up naked and freezing. A nurse leaned over my midsection, holding a thin tube, giggling. I asked her what was so funny? I knew she was laughing at a shriveled dick whose size would have embarrassed a twelve-year-old boy. I gathered all my strength and said, “You could have a little respect for a guy who should be dead, and what exactly is your name?” She straightened up and stuck the catheter in. She covered me up and put her hand on my forehead. I passed back out. I woke back up. I was in a bed. The bed was in a recovery room. There were all the usual machines going beep-beep. There were IV bags www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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and fresh flowers and foil balloons. There was an oversized teddy bear. My feet were elevated. And there was the tube, inserted cleanly into my chest, surrounded by white gauze and tape. A beep-beep went off, unlike the beep-beeps monitoring my heart and respiratory rates. A sound like a small servo followed. Not ten seconds later I was as high and happy as I could be. I passed back out. I woke up, I passed out, I woke up. Nurses changed my bedpan and sponged me down. I recovered some strength, I got up and walked around, dragging my setup— the IV, the morphine drip, the chest tube detached from its pump— around with me. After a few days I could walk up and down the hall once. After a week I could walk around the recovery unit. Being so weakened was a new experience and a definite low point. It’s truly humbling to be reminded that ultimately we’re just a body. The mind gets a lot of attention, but it is housed, for better or worse, in such a fragile thing. The body goes and, well, who knows? This is why I believe in God. I prayed. I’ve always been an imperfect Christian. I prayed for my family and for myself. I prayed I’d get to go back to the streets, to go back to work. As I improved, I began to spend equal amounts of time awake and asleep. I befriended Dr. Richard Carmona, the surgeon who’d operated on me. He was a high-school dropout who’d enlisted in the Army, joined the Special Forces, became a decorated Vietnam vet, and then returned to civilian life, where he took up a career in medicine. He was the head of trauma services in Tucson and moonlighted as a SWAT operator with the Pima County sheriff ’s office. Not ten days after I came in, he was shot himself while executing a warrant. He made a full recovery and eventually went on to become the seventeenth U.S. surgeon general. Gaining Dr. Carmona as a friend was one of the best things that came from my getting shot. People visited, they stayed too long, my mother cried. My dad, shocked and pale, said he was proud of me, even though I pointed out that I’d been a fool. We agreed that I’d been lucky. Other people came: college buddies, cops, my first wife, whom I’d married out of college. The pump attached to my chest tube ran nonstop. It cleared my wound of clots and errant blood, emptying the stuff into an otherwise white bucket by my bedside. When people stayed too long, I wiggled until the suction caught something, expelling it into the bucket like a tiny abortion. That usually sent them packing. www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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I got deathly bored. You can watch only so much TV, and the flowers die if they’re not watered. I didn’t do a good job of watering them. The balloons deflated. It’s as if these things are brought to give their meager life-forces to your recovery, dying along the way. I was being reanimated by withering roses and expiring helium. Hell, morphine makes you think funny things. I’d developed quite a taste. No doubt, I was in excruciating pain, especially the first week, but after that it was more recreational than essential. My morphine bump was self-administered but limited by a timer— I couldn’t hit myself more than once over a three-hour period. So I secured the switch with some medical tape from my IV and I’d get a narc bump whenever the timer went off, awake or asleep. I had some wild dreams. It was heaven. The director of ATF called. He called me his golden boy. I didn’t like being called a boy, I was twenty-six. He said he’d heard good things about me, and that if I played my cards right I could have his job one day. He told me to get well soon and get back on the job, that they needed more guys like me in ATF. I thanked him and hung up. At night I’d wake up from time to time. I had a funny feeling. The lights were low, the machines beep-beeped. As I got better, there were fewer and fewer of them in the room. A good sign. The feeling I got was a new one. It was a rush I’d never known. On the football field, I’d been hit a thousand times by hundreds of guys my size or bigger. I’d taken some real kill shots and always tried to get back up right away. It was a pride thing. When they dragged me out of the car, my chest spurting and gurgling, I actually pulled myself into a sitting position. It was the best I could do. The new feeling was this: I couldn’t be stopped. After being shot, I began to feel the first pangs of invincibility. The rush of near-death did something dangerous to me, though I couldn’t see it at the time. I didn’t want to get shot ever again, but I wanted to get as close to that flying bullet as I possibly could. Getting cheered by eighty thousand football fans was an incredible feeling, but it didn’t even register when compared with the rush of walking the line between life and death when no one was watching. I’d taken the prescribed amount of painkillers, but that didn’t change the fact that when I left the hospital I felt like a full-blown junkie. I had black circles under my eyes and puked brown tar for a week. No appetite for anything but the smack I couldn’t have. I cleaned up: shakes, sweats, tears, the whole thing. My wife at the time wanted to know if that was it for me. She www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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wanted me to get out. I couldn’t blame her. I said this was why I was in it. She asked, “To get shot?” I said, “No, to go toe-to-toe with these guys. I lost this time, but I won’t lose again.” Not long after that, we got divorced. The director’s words rang in my ears: I could have his job. His job involved a large slab of wood and an executive-style telephone with lots of buttons and lights. Shoot, in that year, 1987, he probably even had his own computer. It didn’t appeal to me. The bullet put the rush of the streets in me and through me. It guaranteed I’d never direct anything but myself, and convinced me that large desks were for castrated dummies. I thought, Fuck that, I’m gonna be an undercover.
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No Angel
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